Well, friends and people I haven’t met, we’ve arrived. It seems like just yesterday I was but a sapling, green in youth, starting my first Survivor game and running into all sorts of issues from scoring problems to non-players to people taking the game much, much too seriously (Rachel, primarily; she won, so it’s tough to fault her). Well, nearly five years later we still have all of those things, but we kinda know how to deal with them.
Anyway, I’m Kelly/Spookymilk, and I created the game and will make most of the posts. For the second time my friend Beau will be co-judging, and I will mock him ruthlessly in some of my posts for no other reason than to amuse myself.
Now, normally the game will run with a challenge on Tuesday that will be due on Sunday afternoon, and the losing team will be asked to eliminate a player by anonymous vote. On Tuesday, I will post which player has been voted out and I’ll post the next challenge.
For this game, though, I decided to run the first three weeks with no eliminations, so nobody’s one-and-done. One challenge will be given each of the first three Tuesdays, and scores will go up on Sundays. At the end of the three weeks, only the highest-scoring team overall will win Immunity, with the other two teams voting to eliminate one player each. The only exception to this is if only one team has people who don’t submit anything. If this happens, then at the end of the three weeks, that team will eliminate two players.
Simple enough? No? Well, you’ll get it as we go along. In the meantime, I open with the same challenge I always open with, and the only challenge that’s been in all seven games: Fiction 59.
For this one, you’ll be writing a complete story in exactly 59 words. It can be funny or sad, or whatever. All I ask is that the story feels like an entire story, not part of a much longer one.
Why 59? I don’t know, but this is the way a friend of mine pitched it to me once upon a time, so I ran with it. Entries that don’t have exactly 59 words will get a score of 0, but please understand that I’ve had to relax that over the years; some use online word counters, which are iffy, and there seems to be considerable controversy over how to count a hyphenated word. In any event, if I can tell how you arrived at 59, you’re fine.
From there, those of you who did not fail math will be given a score of 1-5, with 5 being the best. People who fail to send an entry will score negative one point, and at the end of the first three weeks, if his or her team loses, the person will automatically cast a vote to eliminate him or herself.
Just to be clear, at the end of the three weeks, each score from each person each week will be averaged, and the two teams that don’t score highest will eliminate one member each.
There is this one thing, which I added last time: to protect the people who are actually attempting to play, it’s actually the lowest-scoring teams with a non-submitter that will have to vote a member out. So, if only one team doesn’t have any non-submitters, they win automatically. Last year it didn’t come up too often, but many years, it would have.
Any questions about the challenge or the game can go here. I do plan on putting a “Rules” tab up there…perhaps today, if I ever get over this fever and hacking cough.
Oh: these are due Sunday at 5pm Central. Send them to my email, foreverunchanged@gmail.com (it’s always listed on the Judges tab if you forget or lose it) and make “Challenge One” the subject. My wife then makes them anonymous for me so I don’t know whose I’m reading when I read them.
Cheers, Survivors. I look forward to this eclectic group of people.
10 comments
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January 18, 2011 at 11:49 am
freealonzo
O.k. Where and how do we submit our entries?
January 18, 2011 at 11:51 am
spookymilk
Balls. Editing now.
January 18, 2011 at 11:54 am
spookymilk
Alright, anything else I forgot? Bah.
I’m sick, so I’m blaming that.
January 19, 2011 at 8:42 pm
mbnovak
You know how sometimes authors preface a story with a quote from elsewhere, as that can give some context? Would that count against the 59 words?
January 20, 2011 at 7:47 am
Beau
My gut says yes; after all, the challenge of this challenge is to get a point across in so few words. Adding a preface seems like cheating the system. But it’s Kelly’s call.
We have, however, allowed titles.
January 20, 2011 at 9:51 am
spookymilk
Yeah, they’d have to be part of the 59 words in this case. I’ve allowed titles in the past, but I’d rather they were part of the 59 also.
It’s basically as Beau said: allowing anything extra defeats the purpose of eliciting a response with the 59-word limitation.
January 20, 2011 at 1:33 pm
adobery
Maybe there needs to be an anonymous account for all contestants to pose questions like these from? Had the answer for mbnovak been “no” it’s likely all anonymity would be out the window when the judges review the entries for the week.
January 20, 2011 at 1:36 pm
spookymilk
Yeah, I almost mentioned that. The only thing that worries me about an anonymous account, though, is that some might use it for abusing other players or something. I’m sure that sounds ludicrous to the new players, but trust me, it happens.
January 20, 2011 at 2:25 pm
mbnovak
I think we can run the risk of losing anonymity and just ask our questions straight up.
Also, I kind of figured as much on this specific answer, but thought I’d ask anyway. I didn’t have anything in mind really, it was just a thought.
January 20, 2011 at 9:12 pm
Beau
By the time this gets down to eight players or so, it is surprising when we don’t know who is writing what. Like all critics, we’re always completely objective.